[QUOTE=BlackEChan;1232523]You can definitely learn something from a video, but an actual teacher is always the best.
“Knowledge is knowledge, it doesn’t matter where it comes from, it matters how you use it.”[/QUOTE]
Don’t you remember Dr Wu used to show videos as a reference so it is good to see how others teach and show stuff and it also serves as a reminder, in case one forgets.
Yes, you can learn a great deal from videos. As Wang Xiang Zhai’s student Kenichi Sawai said once, you can even learn from a photograph. I would go much further - you can learn from statements, stories, movies, random ambient events, dance, watching other people and most of all, from thinking. You can learn a lot, as well, just from listening to hoaxers.
The only real Quan is the Quan that unfolds from intuitive development. It is not possible for anything else to be the real Quan because it has to be a symbiosis with you, and your natural and trained skill. And that can be improved literally overnight just by having an “a ha!” moment. So intuitive unfolding is a key tutor.
People with a lot invested in being a teacher or having what they like to call, bizarrely, “a lineage”, always want to lie and say you can’t learn from videos. You work out why. A video fo yourself is probably the most useful video of all - followed by a video of those guys who say you can’t learn from a video, ha ha.
Having said that, it is difficult to progress without a good coach, at least at first. And for top level, is there any top sports person who doesn’t have a coach? Or, in fact, any who doesn’t use videos as well??